


California Smile

by burglebezzlement



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Baking, California, F/F, Mean Girls References, Trader Joe's, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-14 20:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13597608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: When Minty comes to visit Agatha in California, Agatha faces a difficult choice about which sort of Normal she wants to be.





	California Smile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaraJaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaraJaye/gifts).



In California, I learn to blend. 

My roommates, Madison and Pepper, are so Normal that it’s easy — even my vowels stretch, flatten, until Mum complains that she can’t understand me on the phone. Eighteen years of studying linguistics and pronunciation make it easy to shift my accent, and eighteen years of studying Minty and my other Normal friends mean I notice everything.

Pepper and Madison are as Normal as they come, and I sink into their lives with gratitude, learning fish tacos and happy hours, Trader Joe’s and Tinder.

* * *

We’re lying out on our deck chairs in the sun. I’ve just told my roommates that my friend Minty is coming to stay. It’s nothing I planned, Minty was the one who suggested it, but I was so happy at the thought of seeing her again that I said yes before I could think about whether it was Normal.

“I forget that you’re from Jolly Old England sometimes,” Pepper says.

It’s **Merrie Olde England** , properly. It’s a spell — not a very useful one, all it does is make expired Christmas crackers rain down from the ceiling, but I’d never tell Pepper that and anyway, I’m too pleased at what Pepper’s said.

“I pick her up next Tuesday,” I say. “She’s flying into LAX.”

“Oh, Agatha, _no_ ,” Pepper says. “All the way to LAX?”

Madison doesn’t look up. “Let her get a Lyft or whatever.”

I make a non-committal noise. It’s the noise Pepper uses when her boyfriend asks what she thought about his acting showcases.

* * *

A visit from a friend is perfectly Normal, so I know all the things to do. We’ve already got a futon in the living room of our apartment, from when Pepper and Madison’s friends have come to stay, but I go to IKEA anyway and buy a new daybed for my room, new mattress, new curtains and a new rug that Pepper admired the last time we went.

This is the first time Minty’s ever stayed with me. She couldn’t stay over when we were children. My father wouldn’t stop wandering around, talking about Magikal ailments, and Mum said it wasn’t safe, having a Normal about.

* * *

I drive to LAX to pick Minty up. Pepper and Madison don’t think it’s normal, I can tell, but I’ve been the person arriving at LAX, jetlagged and confused, and anyway I want to see Minty as soon as I can.

Minty looks marvelous — long hair and perfect nails, as always. She nods to me and I lean forward and hug her, impulsively. We’ve never hugged before but I know it’s Normal. Madison hugs her sister when she visits. Minty smells like her perfume, a blend of florals and citrus, and I don’t want to let go.

“Agatha!” Minty’s voice is just as I remember it. “Look at you! Lovely to see you. California obviously agrees with you.”

“So good to see you,” I say, my vowels blurring between Minty’s perfect RP and Madison and Pepper’s flat American. I reach out to take her bags. She’s got heaps of them, and I’m glad I left Lucy, my dog, at home as we lug them through the airport to my car.

* * *

I’ve planned for us to lie out in the sun the next day, but Minty takes one look at Madison and Pepper and shakes her head. “I’d burn like a lobster,” she says, and then she suggests baking something together, the way we used to do. 

Madison and Pepper live on Postmates and GrubHub deliveries, so our refrigerator is always crowded with leftovers but never has milk or eggs. I collect Lucy and Minty and we head to Trader Joe’s together. 

I love Trader Joe’s — it’s so Normal. Minty loves it too. She’s never been in one before. I fill our cart with orange juice and eggs and milk and flour while Minty gets distracted by the number of different burritos, and asking why anyone would need more than one flavor of salsa. People are looking at us, and I don’t even care. I look at Minty, peering down into a freezer case full of frozen tamales, and I feel warm inside.

When we get back, we make tres leches cake with caramel sauce. Pepper and Madison won’t take any — “so many carbs,” Pepper says — so we eat it all ourselves, sitting on the futon in the living room, Lucy curled up beside Minty.

* * *

“She’s so _weird_.”

I’m in the hallway. Minty’s back in my bedroom, waiting for the nail polish I just put on her toes to dry and for me to throw away our taco wrappers and bring back watermelon margarita mix and seltzer, but Pepper and Madison are in the kitchen.

“So horsey,” Madison says, while Pepper snickers. “That laugh! Those teeth, too.”

“And Agatha likes her,” Pepper says, “she’s so normal usually.”

“We should be nice,” Madison says.

“We’re being nice.” I hear Pepper crack open a can of Diet Coke.

I feel my face flush and duck further back into the hallway. _If Minty isn’t normal, I don’t want to be normal either,_ I think, and then I throw our taco trash away in the bathroom trash can, even though Minty picked off her wasabi slaw and it’ll smell.

In my room, Minty’s curled up on the daybed. Her toenails are bright gold against my new IKEA bedspread, and she’s got Mean Girls playing on her laptop while she fusses Lucy. We must have watched Mean Girls a hundred times while we were in school. 

She looks up at me when I come in and I feel a rush of something I can’t name, protectiveness and fondness and affection and longing, like a stabbing in the gut, and I sit down beside her like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

I can smell her perfume. Most Normal people in Southern California don’t wear it, but Minty does. She always smells wonderful.

“Agatha?” Minty pauses Mean Girls and looks up at me. “Everything cricket?”

I’ve missed her voice. I’ve missed her everything.

I sit next to her, still feeling that roiling in my gut, like everything suddenly adding up, falling together. I wonder how long I’ve been in love with her. Maybe for years. The entire time I thought something was missing with Simon —

“Agatha?” Minty looks concerned now.

I lean in, brushing her long, dark hair back from her face, and kiss her, like I can’t help myself. Maybe I can’t. 

There’s a moment where all I can think is _oh no_ because she’s frozen, like I’ve just ruined everything — but then Minty makes this little sighing noise, a happy noise, a noise that makes my stomach flutter madly. She runs one hand through my hair, brushing my cheek, and then grips my shoulder, like she doesn’t want to let go.

* * *

My name is Agatha Wellbelove, and I might actually deserve it.

I live in California with Minty, my girlfriend, and our dog Lucy, and all of Minty’s horses, because when you’re dead posh, it turns out you can move to California with your girlfriend and open a ranch, if that’s a thing you want to do. Minty teaches equestrianism to movie stars and people who want to be movie stars. She’s very good at it. 

I teach accents — if there’s anything Watford teaches you, apart from magic, it’s hearing how Normals speak.

The last time Mum visited, she insisted on bringing over her great-aunt’s wand. “I know you might have lost yours,” she said, and even though I told her I didn’t want it, didn’t need it, she still slipped it into the bedside table before she left.

Minty is the one who finds it.

“Your mum thinks you’re going back to magic,” she says, handing the wand to me.

“You knew?” I take the wand, my heart beating. I always assumed —

“You used to drop enough hints,” Minty says, and then leans in to kiss me. My favorite kind of Normal, and all of the magic I need.


End file.
